ASMA A KHAN & CLARA CONGDON

Asma A Khan / Clara Congdon

Vernissage Thursday May 10, 6 - 9pm
Exhibit runs May 3 - 27, 2018


Asma A Khan

I am a Pakistani Canadian artist/ sculptor. I grew up in Karachi, Pakistan and after finishing my Bachelors in Fine Arts, I moved to Europe before settling down in Montreal. Montreal has now been my home for the last two decades.

I attempt to create "thought forms" using a visual vocabulary that comes from observing plant life, bugs, crustaceans, human anatomy and the microscopic world. These thought forms are meant to express complex emotions in something other than words since we live in a time where language is overused, abused and the true, authentic meaning of a word can sometimes be lost. These thoughts forms are also meant to convey the incredible complexity of what the human mind considers simple in contrast to itself, in order to challenge the human ego with something like the complexity of form and structure found in a humble potato.


Clara Congdon - Possessions

Possessions is a series of hand-embroidered fabric collages created in response to a 19th-century medical reference book called Physician's Anatomical Aid. Each vital organ and major bone group was stitched as an exercise in valuing my body on my own terms. 

Clara Congdon works in Montreal and holds a BFA in Textiles from NSCAD University. She has recently exhibited in Halifax, Toronto, Montreal, and Iowa City.

Anthony Easton - i will never live up to my blue china

Anthony Easton
- i will never live up to my blue china

Vernissage Thursday 11 May 6 - 9pm
Exhibit 11 - 31 May 2017

I keep thinking about the problems of the decorative, the queer history of the same, and how much writing has taken place about the problem blue in the last 30 years--especially Maggie Nelson's book Bluet's--but also a wide variety of readings on Goethe's colour work, Derek Jarmon's film Blue, and William Gass' essay "On Being Blue". I have also been making cyanotypes for a while, and thinking about Victorian science. I am also thinking about other kinds of decorative beauty. The altar of worship, the altar of beauty, and the ongoing problem of abstraction are all part of this installation.  

The piece will have 46 cyanotypes (one for each of the years Wilde lived) of liillies (Lily for it's queer and decadent history, and ironically because it is the symbol of the virgin Mary, whose colours were blue).

-Anthony Easton

Curiosities: past print future

Curiosities: past print future

Vernissage: Thursday April 6, 7:00 – 9:00 pm

The show runs from Wednesday April 5 - Sunday April 9

Curiosities: Past Print Future is a site-responsive group show of Concordia Print Media screenprinting students. In responding to the space of Monastiraki, the exhibit showcases works that have been inspired by aspects or objects found within the gallery / curiosity shop. With screenprint as the main technique unifying the projects, the works include two-dimensional prints, artists’ books, three-dimensional and intervention-based works. These works are integrated into the existing space, dispersed among the found objects and art pieces that are currently installed in the space. As the curiosity shop / art space is a selected collection of artwork and objects, arranged in a state of organized “clutter” that reflect shop owners and artists, Billy Mavreas and Emilie O’Brien’s aesthetic and personal preferences, the group, in a sense, will be collaborating with Billy and Emilie by responding to their already rich material conversation. Through their production, the students are responding to themes of history, the future and altering perceptions of space, time and expectation. As students reference and integrate fragments of visual culture found from the non-traditional gallery space of Monastiraki, hierarchical assumptions about types of art and how they are interacted with will be subverted and overturned. What is viewed as art or artifact will be brought into question. 

Participants:
Olivia Boda
Véronique Dion
Maeve Doyle
Cariston Fawcett
Sarah Cloutier-Boulay
Stéphanie Laporte
Alexey Lazarev
Amanda Manson
Gabrielle Mulholland
Marzi Rahmani
Morag Rahn-Campbell
Theran Sativa
Yamina Sekhri
Pattie Weston

Todd Stewart - Shield Country

Todd Stewart
Shield Country

Vernissage jeudi 6 octobre
expo 6 - 30 octobre, 2016


Todd Stewart : I'm an illustrator and a printmaker. The works in this show are all printed, and are compositions drawing heavily on illustration, either directly on wood or paper, with varying levels of abstraction. The silkscreen process allows me to work automatically, exploring symbol, transparency and light by printing multiples of simple elements and patterns. The work on display was created in the last two years, which includes time spent on residency in Scarborough, Ontario and Saint-Louis, Senegal. Much of it is about landscape and meaning in the symbols in the spaces around us.

Julie Desquand April 2016

Vernissage Thursday April 7 6 - 9 pm

Expo 7 avril - 30 avril 2016

Julie est une artiste vivant à Montréal, son travail nous présente une :

Allégorie d’un monde flottant, indicible, évocateur de rêve, cette série d’estampes faites d’huile et d’encre, nous livre un univers fantasmagorique née d’une affinité entre dessin et peinture.

Julie is an artist living in Montreal, her recent work presents:

An allegory of a floating world, indescribable, evoking an aura of dreams. This oil and ink print series reveals a phantasmagoric universe born from an affinity between drawing and painting

juliedesquand.com

iconosquare.com/julie.desquand

Carl Campeau - Mathieu Beauséjour

Carl Campeau  

Jours Ouvrables

Mathieu Beauséjour  

SPARE SOME SOCIAL CHANGE (NOTHING HAS CHANGED)

May/Mai 2015

vernissage vendredi 1 mai 18 - 21hr

Carl Campeau

Mathieu Beauséjour 

Carl Campeau vit et travaille à Montréal. Après des études en littérature et en cinéma, il glisse tranquillement vers l’art visuel. Autodidacte, il développe au fil des années une production artistique singulière dans les arts d’impression, qui se caractérise par une économie du langage plastique, par des formes géométriques simples, lignes droites, couleurs monochromes, où chaque action est déposée sur un support brut et immaculé. À mi-chemin entre l’art minimal et la nouvelle abstraction, que ce soit par ses collages, pastels ou sérigraphies, il réside toujours un désir de raconter une histoire à travers les vides laissés sur les œuvres.

Jours ouvrables
La littérature est toujours le moteur de ma création et le présent projet ne fait pas exception. Avec Jours ouvrables, j’exprime le désir de créer un dialogue entre le Frère Marie Victorin (né Conrad Kirouac), religieux canadien, botaniste et écrivain, et Jack Kerouac, écrivain, qui va au-delà du lien familial qu'on leur attribue. Jours ouvrables explore la quête des deux hommes à travers le territoire, la flore et la spiritualité. M’inspirant de la figure de style de la synecdoque, je tente de réduire les interventions sur le papier, dans l’espoir de créer un vocabulaire pictural simple qui laisse place aux interprétations les plus diverses. Jours ouvrables tente de caresser les souvenirs fanés d’une lecture marquante, d’une fleur qui éclôt ou le souvenir d’une porte de grange sur le bord de la route.

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Mathieu Beauséjour works from a stand of resistance, corruption or “semiotic terrorism”. Employing diverse techniques, he overthrows materials and concepts of power, alienation, and oppression. His works gives both an ironic and a nostalgic feel within political and artistic avant-garde. He also makes use of cultural emblems such as currency, anthems and manifestos in order to explore today’s state of affairs. His work is contextual; it is created specifically for the space it occupies, whether it is a gallery, a site of intervention, printed paper or a moment in time.

Mathieu Beauséjour lives and works in Montreal. His style is diverse and hinges especially on installation art, performance, intervention, and printing. His works have been presented at numerous art centres, public and private galleries, biennials, and museums in Canada and Europe. His work has recently been presented in different group and solo exhibitions, such as the Musée Régional de Rimouski with the exhibition La Révolte de l'imagination - Une Rétrospective (which will be on display at centre d'exposition Expression de Sainte Hyacinthe in winter 2015), at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal during the exhibition La Beauté du geste in 2014, at the Quebec Triennial of 2011 and as part of the Manif d'art 7 de Québec in 2014. Mathieu`s work has been the subject of several exhibition catalogues, the most recent to be released in March 2015. He currently has an artist's studio at the Darling Foundry (Montreal) sponsored by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
(text from galerie antoine ertaskiran)

Todd Stewart - Printwork

We are thrilled to have the gorgeous silkscreened prints of Todd Stewart aka bree,ree framed and on our walls for the month of March.

Concordia SPA (Student Print Association) @ Monastiraki

Concordia University has a student print association and the fine folks there are mounting a mid-term exhibition on our walls the week of Feb. 12 to Feb 16, 2014.
Opening party the evening of Feb. 12.
We're very excited to support the next generation of local print artists.

A New MONASTIRAKI Print !

Rebecca & Quentin of L'APPÂT designed and printed this wicked poster for Monastiraki, a riff on our famed Green Wall Of Chaos !

PARTYKA!

Images from our current show - PARTYKA - a collective of 5 artists from Brooklyn. Our front vitrine is full of cut outs and hanging drawings by them....Check it out yo!

Jason Urban - Letterforms

10 mai - 2 juin 2013
Vernissage vendredi 10 mai 18h - 21h


Letterform, une série d’estampes faites à la main, examine la typographie comme image, bruit et objet utilitaire. En simplifiant la typographie des lettres de l’alphabet Romain en de simples motifs qui unissent les figures et le fond, je minimise le pouvoir de communication de ces caractères de l’alphabet. Ces lettres/images sont faites de motifs linéaires imprimés et gravés avec soin. J’ai un appétit sans borne pour la répétition et ma recherche en création se concentre souvent sur le développement de systèmes exigeant un travail méticuleux et monotone. Cette inclinaison et intérêt pour le travail de main d’oeuvre m’a mené à embrasser l’imprimerie dans mon œuvre de création : l’essence même du travail répétitif et obsessif compulsif. Je commets ces actes physiques banals - ad infinitum- et à travers ces répétitions, ces gestes banals remplacent et contiennent le « sublime ».

À travers une fabrication en série de motifs linéaires vibrants et colorés, les estampes sont transformées en objets utiles : livres, sacs, et décorations sur les murs d’exposition à l’avant du magasin Monastiraki. Les bruit enlevants et vibrants qu’on y trouve évoquent du même coup le repos de la nature et la clameur d’un flux RSS sans fin.

http://www.jasonurban.com/studio22.html

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Jason Urban - Letterform

May 10 - June 2, 2013
Opening Friday May 10th 6pm - 9pm


Letterform, a series of hand-carved relief prints, investigates typography as image, noise and the utilitarian object. By reducing letterforms from the Roman alphabet into simple patterns that merge figure and ground, I minimize their communicative power. These letter/images are made of carefully carved and printed linear patterns. I have an endless appetite for repetition and my creative research often focuses on developing systems that require meticulous and monotonous labor.. This inclination and interest in physical labor has led my work to embrace printmaking: the very essence of repetitive, obsessive-compulsive work. I commit these mundane physical acts- ad infinitum- and through repetition the banal gestures become a stand-in for the "sublime."

Through mass-produced quantities of vibrating linear pattern and color, relief prints are transformed into objects of utility: books, bags and decorative wall art within Monastiraki’s storefront space. The vibrant red-hot noise simultaneously evokes the repose of nature and the clamor of an endless RSS feed.

http://www.jasonurban.com/studio22.html

Pics from our current show - Jo-Anne Balcaen

"J'adore ton travail." by Jo-Anne Balcaen

Jo-Anne Balcaen “J’adore ton travail”

Oeuvres sur papier / Works on paper 2007-2013

Vernissage vendredi 8 mars, 18hr

Exposition 8 - 31 mars, 2013

Les œuvres sur papier exposées ici, y compris encre et gouache sur papier, impression typographique, dactylographiée, et impression au laser, ont été produites en 2007 lors de résidences d’artistes à Toronto et au Banff Centre, et plus récemment à Montréal. La plupart de ces œuvres sont présentées ici pour la première fois.

Bien que le texte ait souvent joué un rôle central dans mon travail, je considère ces œuvres sur papier comme étant en marge à ma pratique principale, qui comprend surtout la vidéo, l'installation et l'impression numérique.

Je suis influencée par la langue vernaculaire de la culture populaire, par l'affichage commercial et le design graphique, du fait que la présentation formelle de ces mots est mise en contraste avec l’émotion ou la psychologie plus profond du message: le besoin normal, mais inavoué de validation, d'acceptation, d'approbation - et la crainte de son contraire: l'indifférence, la critique, le rejet.


Jo-Anne Balcaen (1971, La Broquerie, Manitoba) est une artiste montréalaise œuvrant dans plusieurs médiums, notamment la vidéo, l’audio, l’installation et l’impression. Elle détient un baccalauréat en beaux-arts de l’Université du Manitoba (1994) et une maîtrise en arts visuels de l’Université Concordia, Montréal (2000). Depuis le milieu des années ’90, elle présente régulièrement son travail dans plusieurs festivals, centres d’artistes et galeries au Canada, au Royaume-Uni, en Europe et aux États-Unis. Ces expositions individuelles récentes incluent Sound Ideas au Centre Clark, Montréal, et The Longer I Wait, the Better it Feels, à la Eastern Edge Gallery, à St-Jean, Terre-Neuve. Balcaen à reçue plusieurs bourses de recherche et création du Conseil des Arts et des lettres du Québec, du Conseil des Arts du Canada, et du Conseil des Arts du Manitoba.

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The works on paper exhibited here, including ink and gouache on paper, letterpress, typewritten text and laser prints, were produced in 2007 during artist residencies in Toronto, and the Banff Centre, and most recently in Montreal. Most of these are being shown publicly for the first time.

Although text has often played a central role in my work, I consider these works on paper as being peripheral to my main practice, which is primarily based in video, installation and digital print. Influenced by the vernacular of popular culture, by commercial signage and graphic design, their stark, formal presentation stands in contrast to their deeper emotional or psychological message: the normal yet unspoken need for validation, acceptance, approval – and fear of its opposite: indifference, criticism, rejection.


BIO

Jo-Anne Balcaen (b. 1971, La Broquerie, Manitoba) is a Montreal-based artist working in a variety of media, including video, audio, installation, and print media. She holds a BFA from the University of Manitoba, (1994) and an MFA from Concordia University, Montreal (2000). Since the mid-1990s, her work has been regularly shown in festivals, artist-run centers and galleries across Canada, as well as in the UK, Europe, and in the US. Recent solo exhibitions include Sound Ideas at Centre Clark, Montréal, and The Longer I Wait, the Better it Feels, at Eastern Edge Gallery, in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Balcaen is also the recipient of numerous grants from the Conseil des arts et des letters du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Manitoba Arts Council.

Carl Campeau - Louis Riel

Views from Carl Campeaus' exhibit Louis Riel

CARL CAMPEAU - Our first art show of 2013

Jamie Q - The Possibilities Are Endless

VERNISSAGE AND BOOK LAUNCH
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 5:00PM - 7:00PM

Monastiraki presents an exhibition of new screenprints by Jamie Q derived from images in the artist's new book, THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS.

Jamie Q created the artwork for the book through an open-ended process. The results are not preconceived, nor are they end points; instead, they might be described as visual records of experiments, imaginings, and decisions. Although a formal language emerges with its own symbols and strategies, there always remains room for surprise. The possibilities are endless, and they are also unpredictable. As a sampling of those possibilities, this artwork points us outward: to the unknown, to the could-be, and to the yet-to-come.

Monastiraki - Le Petit Monastère
5478 St-Laurent, Montreal


THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS is published by the McIntosh Gallery Curatorial Study Centre, October 2012. $15, edition of 500, 32 pages, full colour with gold spot, singer sewn binding, 6.5″ x 8.75″

The book is also available online at http://jamieq.net/


Jamie Q has self-published zines and art books for the past ten years as part of a studio practice that also includes painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. They are interested in the social potential of art objects and DIY distribution strategies, and in publication as “the creation of a public.” THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS is their first book produced in collaboration with a publisher. Jamie Q holds a BFA from the Alberta College of Art & Design (2002) and an MFA from Western University (2010). Originally from Edmonton, via Calgary and Montreal, they currently live and work in London, Ontario.

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VERNISSAGE + LANCEMENT DU LIVRE
VENDREDI LE 23 NOVEMBRE, 17-19h

Monastiraki présente une exposition de nouvelles sérigraphies par Jamie Q, provenant du livre récemment publié de l’artiste THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS.

Jamie Q a créé les œuvres artistiques pour ce live à travers un processus ouvert et libre. Le résultat pourrait être décrit comme un témoignage visuel d’expériences, de choses imaginées et de décisions. Les possibilités n’ont pas de limites, et elles sont aussi imprévisibles. En tant qu’échantillonnage de ces possibilités, ce travail artistique pointe vers le monde extérieur : vers l’inconnu, vers ce qui pourrait être, et vers ce qui est à venir.

L’artiste Jamie Q de London, Ontario, a publié indépendamment des fanzines et des livres d’art au cours des dix dernières années, en tant qu’éléments de sa pratique studio qui inclue également des peintures, des dessins, des imprimés et de la sculpture. THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS est leur premier livre produit en collaboration avec l’éditeur. Jamie Q est diplômé du Collège d’art et de design de l’Alberta (BFA, 2002) et a obtenu un MFA de l’Université Western (2010).